" THE NEW YORKER 69 matically mean the end not only of Hit- ler and Mussolini but of their supporter Franco. In the autumn of 1945, to protest the policy of the democracies to- ward Franco, he broke off a concert tour of England. He had stopped play- ing in Germany from the time Hitler began persecuting the Jews, and he had stopped playing in Italy soon after- wards. Now he felt that he could not in all conscience go on making regular concert tours as if nothing were amiss. He withdrew to Prades, where, with a number of other refugees from Cata- lonia, he had spent the war years. He lived there in a gardener's two-room cottage and consistently resIsted all ef- forts of impresarios to entice him back to the performing circuit. (One Amer- ican concert agency sent him a signed blank check and authorized hIm to fill it out for whatever fee he might care to name.) His original vow was not to play the cello again in public as long as SpaIn remained a dictatorship. Over the years, he has modified the letter of this vow but only in a way that furthers its cen- tral purpose. When, in 1950, he finally did emerge from retirement for the Prades Festival, it was not to fulfill a commercial engagement. Nor has he fulfilled such an engagement to this day. Many of his admirers and friends, though honoring his moral stand, have felt he took too extreme a position in renouncing his art for so many years. During a meeting with him in 1 951, Albert Schweitzer observed, "It is bet- ter to create than to protest." To this, Casals replied, "Why not do both- why not create and protest, both?" This is perhaps the position he has achieved. Every time he now plays, at one of his festivals or on some other ex- traordinary occasion-at the WhIte House last fall, for example-the world IS reminded of the situation he continues to protest. 4' 1$1< '" ^"j THIS IS THE.' :'. AREA where thé rumors" of age begin :' c - . :rtt:e.., ':" eW"::'_l"f'Oat.::11 t fQ hI::'f'.:keêp:\..ýøIJ lþQI(:;r1'g:' y:ung.r gin a toe e Ukè ':It d I:. .' I NJUSTICE, Catalonia, liberty- these were recurrent thf'mes of his in our talks. And music, of course, dnd people he had known, and nature, and the celebration of life. The cello, too, loomed large in our conversatIons, though it dId not dominate them. At one point, in response to a question of mine, he eXplained what his revolu- tionary innovations in cello technique had been. "Mainly,] simplified cello technique, made it more natural," he said. "I freed the arms. Formerly, cellists plaved in a very artificial pos- ture, all cramped up. They used to keep theIr elbows close to their sides. Teachers made their students hold a book under the bowing arm while prac- t " . ^, t.' ',,'" "'1'" ^t1 .r ':::' .' i1r.ll ' ;;;7 \ ; X. /' \' y\.t" , !'-'\Jl,:, ... ....;.,,-" \ \:: ^, 're$